THE TEA PLANTER
BY ROBIN MAUGHAM

The prolific author Robert “Robin” Cecil Romer Maugham (1916-81), 2^nd Viscount Maugham wrote the short story presented here as part of his second memoir Search for Nirvana, published by W. H. Allen in London in 1975. It was posthumously republished under the name used here, The Tea Planter, but without the first two paragraphs, in Maugham’s collection of short stories, The Boy from Beirut and Other Stories, by Gay Sunshine in San Francisco in 1982.

As “Jack Phillipson”, whose story this is, refers to “Sri Lanka”, it may be presumed that he told his story to Maugham during the latter’s last stay on the island in 1973.

The illustrations are either black-and-white photos of Ceylon that accompanied the original story or paintings of Ceylonese adolescent boys by the Australian artist Donald Friend, who lived there from 1957 to 1962.

While I was up-country during my various visits to Ceylon, I met many tea-planters, and I suggest that I could give short descriptions of several of them. But just as in my autobiography I invented one single boy friend to represent the various boys who had lived with me during the period about which I was writing, so in this book I have decided that it would be both wiser and kinder if I created a composite picture of a tea-planter. So I have invented a complete character.

I will call him Jack Phillipson.

I met Jack Phillipson in the club of the district where I was staying up-country in Ceylon. I had been made an honorary member. There were few people in the bar-room that evening. I went to the counter to order a whisky. Standing next to me was a tall man who turned to me with a pleasant smile.

“Good evening,” he said. “It’s good to see a new face here once in a while. Heaven knows there are few of us left. Fifteen years ago there were four hundred European planters. Now we’re only twenty. Have a drink or two with me?”

“Thanks,” I replied.

As the squat Ceylonese barman poured out our drinks, I examined the planter. He was about forty, and at first sight he looked like the hero of an early safari movie made in Africa. He had a “rugged, handsome, virile face”—as his publicity agent would have proclaimed—and a genial yet stern expression. You could hear his crisp word of command, “Bring out the machine-guns.” Yet when I observed him more closely I detected flaws in the picture I had formed of him. His cheeks were slightly flabby; his eyes which should by rights have “gleamed a crystal blue” were a little bloodshot, and his chin, which should, of course, have been as firm as marble, quivered slightly as he talked.

“Cheers!” he said: and went on: “This country’s tea finds its way to most parts of the world. It accounts for two-thirds of Sri Lanka’s export earnings. But it won’t for long. Not at the present way things are going.” He scowled at me as if I were the government economist responsible. “What’s your name?” he asked.

I told him.

“Mine’s Jack Phillipson,” he said. “But everyone calls me Jack, so you’d better as well.” He sipped his whisky and then turned to the barman. “Now look here, Asoka,” he said. “I seem to remember we’ve had this argument before now. You’re a very good fellow, but you’ve a poor memory. When I say I want whisky, I don’t mean a teaspoonful. I want three measures. So be a kind man and fill up our glasses, will you?”

The barman grinned. Evidently he liked my companion. Our glasses were filled up. Jack raised his glass to me and drank.

“Of course, one needs discipline on a tea-estate,” he told me. “A tea bush should be plucked every seven or eight days. The women mainly do the plucking. The men are responsible for replanting, draining, road maintenance, spraying and pruning and the rest. The men get about three rupees and fifty cents a day. That’s the equivalent of over four shillings. The women get two rupees and eighty cents a day. What’s more the coolies . . . sorry—we have to call them “labourers” nowadays . . . the labourers live in their lines rent-free with a free plot of land for cultivating a garden or keeping cattle and goats. There’s a school for the children who get free food-stuffs paid for by the estate. There’s a dispensary and a maternity ward complete with midwife. So what more do they want? Answer me that one.” Jack raised his glass and finished it.

“But I can tell you what I want,” he announced. “Asoka!”

“This round is on me,” I said.

“Impossible,” Jack replied. “You’re not a member, and only members can buy drinks.”

“I’m an honorary member.”

Jack laughed. “All right,” he said. “You win. But for heaven’s sake let’s go and sit down. These bar-stools are quite desperately uncomfortable.”

As we moved to a small table at the other side of the room I reflected on the tone of voice in which he had said the words “quite desperately”. The accent had been more like that of a television comedian than an Empire builder. I decided that Jack Phillipson was an odd mixture; I also decided that at all costs I must steer the conversation away from the manufacture of tea.

“How long have you been out here?” I asked.

“Here? Ever since I chucked up my pathetic studies in London to become a chartered accountant. I never felt at ease in England—to tell you the truth. You see, I was born in India. My father was a bank manager in Bombay.”

One of the “boys” brought our drinks.

“I was sent to school in England, of course. And I loathed it. I just couldn’t wait for my holidays in India.”

Jack sipped his drink and then smiled gratefully at Asoka. “Well done,” he shouted. “Exactly right. Positively brilliant.”

It was at that moment I decided that Jack was already a bit drunk.

“The climate in Bombay can be ghastly. But for all the humidity and heat the place has a distinct advantage. Can you guess what?”

I could think of several advantages, but I decided to be wary.

“No,” I replied.

“Promise you won’t be shocked?”

“I promise.”

“Girls,” said Jack. “Girls of every age and size. Now are you shocked?”

“Not at all.”

“Good,” Jack said. “That means I can make a further confidence. In those days my parents had plenty of Indian servants, and the servants had children. I slept with my first Indian girl when I was fourteen. She was the same age as I was. Her name was Rashmie. Well, I’m not a poet, so I’ll just put it in one word. It was ecstasy. Ecstasy. I couldn’t believe that so much pleasure could exist on earth—or that I could ever experience it again. But I did. Indeed, I did. The very next night we met at the same place. And so it went on till I had to go back to school.

“Next holidays Rashmie was still there. And it was just as wonderful. Of course, by then I’d done the usual playing around with other boys at school, but it wasn’t the same thing. I suppose in a way I was in love with Rashmie. Then while I was at school came the break up. My father was posted to Borneo. I never saw Rashmie again.”

“Well, the years passed by. At times I’d go to Borneo, and I’d find a girl there. But when I started my work for my accountancy exams I decided I’d better start looking round for an English girl. And at last I found one who was perfect. Nineteen, slim, blonde, pretty, sensual-looking—the lot.

Jack tells Maugham how he discovered he was incapable of arousal with white girls, while he continued to find “coloured” girls intoxicatingly erotic. He therefore gave up accountancy and moved to Ceylon, where he soon had a good job. Jack being now very drunk, he invites Maugham to continue their chat at his bungalow the next Tuesday evening.

There they discuss why people sometimes felt the need to tell strangers their story and Jack proceeds to tell of how he had found a beautiful dark-skinned girl.

“It began when I was an Assistant Superintendent,” he said. “In those days, as I told you at the club, there were nearly four hundred white planters up-country. Now there are a bare twenty. Even after the war there were parties four or five days a week—if you wanted to go to them. After dinner there was bridge and dancing to the gramophone and plenty to drink. It was all very pleasant. But my trouble persisted. I couldn’t fancy the planters’ daughters—or their wives, come to that. And I didn’t fancy the Ceylonese boys—as some did on the sly.

“At a dance one night I’d drunk a bit too much because I didn’t much like my hosts, and I’d been persuaded into going to their bungalow against my will. I went out on to the verandah and strolled round to the far side of the house where the nursery quarters were. The night was deliciously cool. As I turned the corner I saw a Ceylonese girl. She was about seventeen. She was wearing a length of coloured cloth round her waist and a short tight-fitting bodice which left her midriff bare. She was obviously the children’s ayah.

Jack next told of how he induced the girl to come to live with him as his mistress, explaining how she could never be received as that by his fellow whites, less still become his wife. Living together, it was bliss in bed but it gradually became clear that she shared “the ambition of many Ceylonese girls in those days was to marry a white man.” Frustrated with him, she was unfaithful with an English mechanic she mistakenly thought would marry her. Jack paid her off forthwith and she became a tart.

Jack’s first confession over, they had dinner, during which they talked of other subjects.

After dinner we went into the living-room for coffee and brandy.

“Though one can be horribly lonely in this place—lonelier perhaps than you could ever imagine—you mustn’t suppose I live here all the year round,” Jack said suddenly. “I have business to attend to in Colombo, so I stay the night occasionally. I have a flat there.”

“Are there any good night-clubs?”

“Two or three aren’t bad,” Jack replied. “And in one of them I met my only other adventure.”

“How?”

“I was at the bar and I’d just been turned down by a very pretty Ceylonese girl who had flounced off. The lighting was so discreetly dim in the place that you could hardly distinguish anyone, but I was vaguely aware of a person with a lovely face and long hair sitting on the bar-stool next to me. I thought it was a girl. Anyhow there was no mistake about the smile of sympathy. Then the person turned towards me, and with a shock, and I admit a slight thrill, I realised it was a boy. And he was very attractive. And suddenly I decided to take a chance—if I got the opportunity.

“I offered him a drink. The boy accepted. I now noticed that he was well-dressed. A Ceylonese businessman’s son on a night out, I thought to myself. As we drank I gathered the bare facts of his life. His name was Nimal and he was eighteen years old. When he was fourteen, a European had picked him up on the streets of Colombo and installed him in his apartment, sent him to school, supervised his education, and left him all his money when he died.”

“ ‘So now what do you do?’ I asked.

“Nimal smiled. ‘Nothing,’ he answered. ‘Why should I take a job sweating over a typewriter in an office, when I can swim and lie on the Mount Lavinia beach, looking at the pretty girls around?’

“ ‘Only girls?’ I asked.

“Nimal smiled his innocent smile. ‘Perhaps you could say “not only girls”,’ he replied in his pleasant educated voice. Evidently the turns of phrase and accent of his benefactor had rubbed off on him.

“ ‘Which do you prefer?’ I asked.

“ ‘I like both. And you?’

“ ‘I’m not sure.’

“Nimal smiled at me again. I find it hard to describe his smile, but it seemed to be full of understanding and at the same time to assure one of complete devotion.

“ ‘I think there is a question you may want to ask me,’ he murmured.

“ ‘Yes?’

“ ‘Would you think I was impertinent if I told you the question?’

“ ‘No.’

“ ‘You want to ask me if I will go home with you tonight. And my answer is “yes”. You need not pay me any money, because from the moment I saw you I took a liking to you.’ ” Jack put down his glass of brandy and grinned at me. “It seemed that Fate had given me a new chance and a most beautiful present,” he said. As he spoke, I noticed that Jack’s voice was once again beginning to become slurred. “I’ve always thought it was better to suffer from remorse rather than from regret. So I smiled back at Nimal,” he continued.

“ ‘I’m glad your answer is “yes”,’ I said.

“ ‘You have a room?’

“ ‘Quite near here.’

“ ‘And we will be alone?’

“ ‘Most certainly,’ I answered.”

Jack filled up our glasses.

“Nimal and I went back to my room,” he continued. “And I’ll only say it was one of the most wonderful nights of my life. In the morning we sat in sarongs drinking coffee.

“ ‘Where do you live?’ I asked Nimal.

“ ‘Not far from the old fort.’

“ ‘Do you have no job at all?’

“ ‘None.’

“ ‘Do you still have money?’

“Nimal’s hand dipped into the breast-pocket of his coat which had hung on a chair, and pulled out a wallet, and displayed three hundred rupees.

“ ‘That’s all I’ve got left,’ he said.

“ ‘Don’t you want a job?’

“ ‘Not in Colombo. I’m bored with the whole place.’

“ ‘Nimal,’ I said, ‘you told me last night that you’d taken a liking to me. Do you still feel the same this morning?’

“Nimal got up from the cushion on which he’d been sitting, came over to me, kissed my forehead and then my lips. ‘More so,’ he answered.”

Jack lit a cigarette.

“It was then I told Nimal the plan I’d made while his arms were still holding me. It was quite simple, for Nimal was already educated. My clerk could teach Nimal to type. Nimal would become my secretary and my companion. He would have his own office and bedroom. In the morning he would work in the office. In the afternoon he would go out riding or swim in the pool. After dinner we could play cards or billiards. Meanwhile I would give him driving lessons, so that eventually, if he saved from the salary I would pay him, he could buy himself a second-hand car.

“To all this Nimal listened enthusiastically.

“ ‘I have only two things to ask you,’ he said. ‘First, may I stay a week in Colombo to clear up things. Secondly, please can I go with you this morning to buy the kind of clothes I shall need upcountry.’

“That morning we went round the stores of Colombo and bought Nimal a complete ‘wardrobe’ of clothes. While a jacket was being packed up for us, Nimal gave me a wink.

“ ‘What if I keep all the clothes and don’t come up-country next week?’ he asked.

“ ‘Then I shall have lost what little faith in human nature remains to me,’ I replied.

“Nimal laughed. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ll be on that train, I  can promise you.’ ”

Jack paused and stubbed out his cigarette.

“And Nimal was indeed on the train, looking extremely elegant in his new coat,” Jack continued. “I’d arranged a bedroom and office for him, close to mine. And from the very start he loved the place. It was a joy to me to see his happiness—and to be able to share it with him. Each night he’d creep into my bedroom, though there was no need for discretion because the house-servants guessed almost immediately. From that point of view his position could have been awkward, for in a way he was in Lalitha’s situation. But Nimal had an instinctive tact which made it possible for him to dine with me and yet remain friendly and unselfconscious with the servants. He also understood from the years he had spent with his benefactor that when stodgy planters or their even stodgier wives arrived for a meal he must vanish. And he did.

But by then—from the network, you might say—I’d found a few friends who secretly were ‘sympathetic’. And we’d have gay evenings in our own discreet way.”

Jack lit a cigarette.

“That year with Nimal was one of the happiest I’ve ever known,” he said. “But I knew it couldn’t last for ever, so I tried to live for each day that we had. And it was all so marvellous that only gradually did I notice the faint shadow sliding across the

lawn of our happiness.

“Nimal began to become restless. The first misfortune was that he failed his driving-test, so he couldn’t drive my own car or the estate car into the nearest town—or beyond—to have an evening out on his own. His nervous irritation made him begin to drink more than normal. Soon he was drunk almost every night.

“The row came when I’d invited two ‘gay’ bachelors to dine. At first, the evening went well. Nimal had put on light twill trousers, a blue shirt, and his jacket. He looked splendid. Then as he moved across the verandah soon after my guests had arrived, I saw he was drunk. Both my guests noticed it, but pretended all was well. Then, when dinner was finished and we had gone into the livingroom and were drinking liqueurs, suddenly Nimal began talking about the businessman who had picked him up when he was fourteen. It would have been less unpleasant if he had told the story with his usual charm. But he chose to tell his story with a grim realism which grew increasingly nauseating as he proceeded. Every detail of seduction and fornication was described in vivid detail. ‘But do you know what I get out of all that hideous discomfort, night after night?’ Nimal asked with a dramatic wave of his arm. ‘Enough to keep me in perfect comfort for two whole years.’ Nimal paused.

“ ‘And I’m doing it yet again,’ he said.

“Then Nimal stumbled away to his room.

“The following day I had to attend a court case. I got back in time for dinner. Nimal was already drunk. We made casual conversation during the meal. But when we were in the living-room and the servants had brought coffee and brandy, I went over

to Nimal and put a hand on his shoulder.

“ ‘Why do you drink so much?’ I asked.

“He wriggled away from me with a gesture of impatience.

“ ‘Leave me alone,’ he said.

“ ‘Just tell me why,’ I insisted.

“Nimal sprang up, went to the drinks-tray and poured himself a large brandy.

“ ‘Why?’ he repeated. ‘Because I feel I’m in a prison up here. What can I do in the evenings? Can I go to a cinema or a dance? No. Too far away. Is there even one single night-club for a hundred miles around? No. Not one. And if there were I couldn’t get to it because that wretched driving-instructor failed me— because you wouldn’t give me the money to bribe him. And when you invite guests, and I’m graciously allowed to attend dinner, do you think it’s much fun for me, hearing the same old stories over

and over again? And when, as usual, we’re alone together do you think I enjoy seeing your face staring at me across the table night after night?’

“I tried to keep my temper. ‘Should we go down to Colombo for a week?’ I asked. ‘I think I could get a week’s leave.’

“ ‘What difference would that make?’ Nimal asked. ‘You’d still expect me to go with you to parties where I’d only meet people of your own age. Can’t you understand? I want freedom. I want to go round the bars with my friends and have a good time.’

“ ‘But when we first met, you told me you were fed up with Colombo.’

“ ‘One gets fed up with everything after a time.’

“Nimal took a gulp of his drink and smiled at me. But the smile was no longer innocent; it was sly and almost triumphant.

“ ‘Besides,’ Nimal said, ‘I only told you I was fed up with Colombo because I knew it would please you.’

“ ‘And has it been in order to please me that you told me you liked this estate?’ I asked.

“ ‘Yes.’

“Nimal was now glaring at me drunkenly.

“I made one more effort, but I promised myself it would be the last.

“ ‘I can see that you must get bored and lonely at times up here,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you go down to Colombo and find a friend of your own age and bring him back here so he’d be a companion to you?’

“Nimal threw his glass against the mantelpiece. For an instant he stood looking down at the smashed pieces. He was panting for breath. Then he spoke.

“ ‘There’s only one person I’d bring back to this estate,’ he said.

‘And that’s my legally wedded wife.’ ”

I left Jack a few drinks later.

“Excuse me for not driving you home,” Jack said. “But I always ask my driver to take over at nights—when I’ve had a bit to drink.”

As the car drove away Jack was standing on the verandah. The moon had risen, and across the valley one could see the crests of the black mountains.

Jack waved his hand in farewell.